Under the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), a collaboration of organizations for setting industrial standards, the establishment of Long Term Evolution (LTE)-Advanced specifications is underway. Under LTE-Advanced, an LTE system carrier (e.g., of a maximum of 20 MHz) is defined as a component carrier and the aggregation of component carriers to obtain high throughput is being investigated.
To provide a wireless data communication method and apparatus that can guarantee communication at an optimal communication speed under any line state, a wireless data communication method of a wireless data communication apparatus that wirelessly communicates data using multiple lines by a multi-ring method, has a stabilizing unit that monitors the line state, and based on the obtained monitoring information, switches data paths and performs line selection, has been disclosed (see, for example, Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2000-174770).
A packet transferring method has been disclosed in which a wired line connecting a base station apparatus and an exchange station includes a common channel that can be commonly used by multiple terminals and exclusive channels that can be used respectively by only one terminal. When the volume of data transferred from a terminal is a given value or greater, the terminal is allocated an exclusive channel and when data is transferred using the exclusive channel, the data that is to be transferred from the terminal is queued consequent to the excessive volume of transfer data. When the volume of queued data becomes equal to or exceeds a predetermined value at which the data volume causes delay to occur, the terminal is newly allocated an exclusive channel. The exclusive channel and the additional exclusive channel are used to transfer packets until the volume of queued data becomes less than or equal to a predetermined value at which the volume of delayed data recovers (see, for example, Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2001-024706).
However, with the conventional technologies above, a problem arises in that physical resources cannot be efficiently used. For example, when there is no data to be transferred, or when there is little data to be transferred, power is wasted using multiple component carriers for transmission and reception.
In particular, at the communication apparatus on the receiving side, when there is no data to be transferred, or when there is little data to be transferred, wasteful power consumption is great since multiple component carriers are received to confirm whether data has been stored. Further, not limited to the component carriers prescribed by LTE-Advanced, on a whole, communication methods that separate data among communication carriers for transmission have a similar problem.